Cary’s Rogers East and West: A new life and a new look for a 1960s motel and diner

In the 1960s, a motel and restaurant lived on the corner of East Chatham Street in downtown Cary.

The Rogers Restaurant and Motel was one of the only two eateries in Cary in the late ‘60s and served as a place for community building, and ham and cheese biscuits for 15 cents.

The restaurant was a spot for wedding receptions, dinners, political campaign launches and speeches. Some nights, movies would be projected onto one of the plain walls outdoors. The motel catered to people passing through Cary — which was then a small town a few miles outside of Raleigh — many of them by train.

After owning and operating the businesses for over 30 years, Billy and Barbara Rogers retired and closed the restaurant in 1991, after Billy Rogers suffered a heart attack. But they kept the buildings occupied. The Rogers Motel became something of a halfway house, providing shelter for people in need or down on their luck, the Rogerses’ grandson, Kyle Rogers, recalled. The restaurant space was rented out to tenants trying to start businesses of their own — local artisans and gift shops and for a long time a hair salon. Billy and Barbara Rogers sold the building in 2018, a year before Billy Rogers died.

Today, new life has been breathed into the building, reviving its community-focused roots and allowing work spaces, retail shops, restaurants and small businesses to thrive.

New uses for East and West

Now called Rogers East and West, the building reopened in 2023, renovated and operated by Chatham Street Commercial, one of Cary’s real estate groups. It has 10,000 square feet of street-front retail and 40,000 square feet of office space.

The East building, made of red brick, and the West building, made of white brick, are connected by a three-story atrium-style lobby. Inside, the brick continues on the walls of the building with seating in the lobby and on all floors for visitors to sit facing East Chatham Street.

Though the building was remodeled completely from the ground up, the original mid-century style of the Rogers Restaurant, which is now the West building, was an inspiration to the Chatham Street and Northwoods Associates architects.

Beside the building on its west side is a project between developers and the Town of Cary to revamp Rogers Alley to accommodate visitors. It includes street lamps, overhead market lights and parking.

Sushi, a hair salon, office space

Eight tenants occupy the available spaces of Rogers East and West, with more businesses coming to open spaces on the ground floors this year. By summer, Zest, a sushi restaurant, will open in the West building and Hodge & Kittrell Sotheby’s International Realty, based in Raleigh, will come to the top floor of the East building.

On the ground floor of the East building is the first location of a hair salon called hair salon called (in) tandem & west, owned by local stylist Lindzy Plott, where four independent stylists offer a range of hair services in a modern, creative space.

On the opposite end, on the ground floor of the West building, is a new upscale men’s clothing store, Gentleman’s Corner. The store originated in Pinehurst in 1978 with locations in Wilmington and Palm Beach. The Cary location is owned by Emily Sasser and her brother, Harrison. (The store was formerly located in MacGregor Village in Cary.)

“It’s been a long time coming,” Sasser said. “MacGregor wasn’t a (bad) location by any means, I just think that we got a little lost over there. I think we’ll get a lot more visibility here and a lot more foot traffic. We’re going to do all right here.”

On the third floor of the West building is Cary Founded, the newest location of the Founded Community, a co-working collaboration with four locations in Raleigh.

This story was originally published June 5, 2024 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Cary’s Rogers East and West: A new life and a new look for a 1960s motel and diner."

Kristen Johnson

The News & Observer

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Kristen Johnson is a local government reporter covering Durham for The News & Observer. She previously covered Cary and western Wake County. Prior to coming home to the Triangle, she reported for The Fayetteville Observer and spent time covering politics and culture in Washington, D.C. She is an alumna of UNC at Charlotte and American University.